The thing I had the toughest time adjusting to when I moved here from the snowy Midwest was the mild, green holiday season, especially when I couldn't afford to fly back to see my family. Instead, I would spend time with other holiday orphans who lacked money but made up for it with boundless creativity. Inevitably, new traditions were born. My favorite started in the apartment I shared with Wm. Steven Humphrey back in the early days of The Stranger. We may not have had a tree, but for some reason we did have an inflatable swimming pool (it was blue with a whale's head in the middle). We decided we were well within the spirit of Christmas by taking something that was meant to be outside, bringing it inside, and stringing it with lights. I must admit, the lit-up pool made the presents within it look that much better.

By the time the next year rolled around, we had moved into a house nicknamed the "Hooch Pit" with Brad Steinbacher and two mad geniuses by the names of Matt Cook (original editor of The Stranger) and Todd Davis (a man who can make American history sound like gossip out of Us Weekly). We continued our newfound Christmas tradition, this time by taking a hat rack that was drunkenly garbage picked and a bicycle, and stringing them with lights. We built a fort around it on Christmas Eve, drank eggnog, and woke the next morning to presents and good cheer.

There are plenty of Christmas traditions, both old and new, floating around Seattle. The Grand Illusion continues its wonderful decades-long run of It's a Wonderful Life starting on Friday, December 17, and on Tuesday, December 21, they're hosting their holiday party around it. They're also experimenting with a new tradition by showing Terry Zwigoff's drunken holiday film Bad Santa as a late-night show on Friday and Saturday.

The Northwest Film Forum is hosting its own holiday party on Monday, December 20, after a screening of The Awful Truth. They're serious about the party, too. Though it's free for members and $7.50 for nonmembers, the cost is $30 for anyone NOT in holiday dress. Along with a few metrosexuals in attendance, there will also be a performance by the band the Silver Bells.

Meanwhile, the NWFF will also be showing their own nasty late-night Christmas film when they show Christmas Evil (AKA You Better Watch Out) on Friday and Saturday. That, of course, is the story of a boy who grows up to be a Santa-obsessed loner who will do anything to protect the holiday from the cynical world after seeing his mom felt up by Santa when he was a boy. Director Lewis Jackson will be in attendance. The movie is described as "the best of the 'Santa serial killer' genre" by The Scarecrow Movie Guide, a new book put out by our own Scarecrow Video--which is also a perfect Christmas gift.

andy@thestranger.com